Substance Abuse and Mental Health Counseling

Trauma and addiction can place tremendous restrictions on the lives of children, adolescents and adults, as well as on the lives of their friends and family members. We specialise in the professional treatment of trauma and addictions via:

Hypnotherapy

Kinesiology

Bio- & Neurofeedback

Berard AIT Auditory Integration

Trauma: Children & Adolescents

Society generally views childhood as a naturally happy time – free of responsibilities and worries, but children are as susceptible to trauma as adults, even though their suffering is often overlooked.

Children face the same traumatic events that affect the lives of adults all around them. They become ill, experience accidents, and are often the victims when parents divorce. Being a child offers no protection against loss, grief or death. Children are often cheated, sexually abused, neglected, ignored and injured by adults that they trust. Child victims often remain chronically frightened, depressed and tormented although parents may be quite unaware of the extent of their children’s discomfort.

There is a high correlation between the death of a parent and behavioural problems. Parental loss has also been correlated to substance abuse, delinquency and school attendance problems. There is a direct relationship between childhood critical incidents, like divorce and abuse and the frequency of maladaptive adolescent behaviours.

It’s important to recognize the early stages of traumatization. Prevention is the best solution, but this is not always possible. We help children through art & play therapy, sandplay & narrative therapy, biofeedback and counseling. Distressed children can be relieved of their pain, their joy can be restored and they can become the children they were created to be.

Trauma: Adults

We live in a society that for many decades has been exposed, and still is exposed, to a wide variety of trauma on a large scale – stress caused by politics, violence, crime, car accidents, rape, divorce and deaths.

Adults can often also keep on re-living unresolved childhood traumas. Violent events are not the only trauma people experience. People experience trauma when they leave home, re-locate, get divorced, change jobs, when they age, when they lose their hearing, when they have a child with learning problems, and the list goes on and on – live is not easy.

Time is a healer, but without the necessary interventions serious lesions often remain, which may impair subsequent functioning. Depression, anxiety and insomnia might be the result of unresolved trauma and this hold people back in achieving their goals, building sound relationships and living a happy, fulfilled life.

By putting trauma behind you, you can reach out to the future. We specialize in putting the ghosts of the past at rest, so that every new day can be experienced as a clean slate which just waits to be written by light, joyful and secure experiences. Our motto is: Live your life light as a feather!

Addiction Counselling

Defining an addiction is tricky and knowing how to handle one is even harder.

Addiction is used to describe a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity, despite harmful consequences to the individual’s health, mental state or social life.

The term is used in drug addiction and substance abuse problems, but also refers to behaviours that are not generally recognized by the medical community as problems of addiction, such as compulsive overeating, gambling, internet addiction, sexual addictions, caffeine and sugar addictions.

Drug and alcohol abuse continue to plague young people and adults – both as a result and as a cause of trauma. Relationships with family, friends, the community and the legal system gets compromised, all of which constitute a set of overwhelming burdens. Thus, while substance abuse may be the result of prior trauma, it creates new crises, which puts the individual under more strain.

By eliminating the cause of the addiction (whether it is past trauma, ADHD, depression, anxiety or an unbalanced nutritional system) makes fighting back to take control of your life just so much easier. Unfortunately, overcoming addiction is not easy. Quitting drugs or drinking, gambling, overeating and sexual addictions is probably going to be one of the hardest things you’ve ever done. It’s not a sign of weakness if you need professional help from a trained counsellor or therapist. Most people who try to stop an addiction need professional assistance.